Don’t leave your production planning to chance
How agile is your production planning?
Maximising capacity, ensuring efficiency, meeting deadlines and delivering for customers are key components for any manufacturing business.
Having a defined schedule in place tells production managers – and those working on the line – what to make and in what order.
However, does it have the ability to deal with unexpected events? What if a new order comes in? What if a machine breaks down? What if a component isn’t delivered on time? What if maintenance is scheduled?
You get the idea.
Planning for the unexpected
‘What if’ are two of the most feared words for any production business – and potentially the worst nightmare for a production manager.
While you might have Plan A, do you have a Plan B or C or D to account for a ‘What if’ scenario. Failing to prepare and manage a change in circumstances can have hit your finances and reputation.
If you need to make changes, can you do it quickly and efficiently? We know from experience of one client that could only plan one week ahead at a time – with an army of production managers all present with their spreadsheets. If anything had to change, it could only happen on a daily basis and would take all morning.
That is no longer the case as they brought in our Access Orchestrate, Advance Planning and Scheduling software, bringing all their scheduling together and to eradicating the slow practices that were harming their business. They found a solution, now you need to find yours.
Quick action
Your business needs to be agile and having ‘What if’ scenario planning enables that. Our Orchestrate software has ‘What if’ functionality, that will vastly improve your planning process and to react to situations quicker and with more informed information.
The strength of the Access Orchestrate software is it allows you to play out scenarios and see the impact of your changes before committing to production. You can do this over and over again with the simple-to-use Drag and Drop Gantt Chart, revising the schedule until you are completely satisfied. Seeing the implications instantly means better decision making.
This is incredibly effective for a host of ‘What if’ scenarios and takes any guesswork out of the equation. This takes away any risk, which you can’t afford.
Companies that have installed Access Orchestrate have brought clarity and professionalism to production planning and have made the whole process much easier for day-to-day scheduling.
Problem solving
The software also provides deeper insight into capacity planning to enable optimal production output at any time; it can identify and remove bottlenecks; make real-time scheduling updates and communicate them to the shop floor for an instant response.
Orchestrate overhauls outdated planning processes of spreadsheets and physical boards in workshops to a streamlined and effective operation. It brings greater insight, enables improved customer service, improves competitiveness and embraces Fourth Industrial Revolution technology.
You can’t predict the future – but you can certainly prepare for it.
For more information see our Orchestrate brochure.
